Police were forced to close a road yesterday for safety reasons after hundreds of whisky enthusiasts flocked to a distillery to buy a limited edition bottle of Scotland’s favourite drink.
The Genesis Limited Edition was launched to celebrate the new £140million Macallan distillery and visitor centre, which opened on June 2.
The distillery put 360 of its 2,500 bottles up for sale yesterday – and they sold out within an hour.
Customers began arriving at the site at about 2am and the increasing volume of traffic on a section of the B9102 led to police closing it for safety reasons a few hours later.
Locals described watching about 100 cars circling round roads in Craigellachie.
VIDEO: ‘Chaos’ at Macallan distillery as whisky buffs try to get their hands on a rare bottle
A police spokeswoman said: “Police were asked to assist and a section of the B9102 was closed at the Macallan Distillery, Craigellachie, at the junction of the A941 in the East to Braehead and Overton Cottage in the West. The public were urged to drive carefully and be patient.”
Many queuing whisky buffs left disappointed after finding out they had missed out on a limited edition bottle.
Maxwell Smith travelled 12 hours from Dorset to get his hands on the sought after whisky but after queuing for three hours was told that there was no bottles left to sell.
The whisky collector said: “I was looking forward to getting my hands on it but there will be another time.
“If I had known that only 360 bottles would be available I wouldn’t have come up, I invested a lot of time in this and came up disappointed.”
A Macallan Distillery spokeswoman said staff requested help from the police after realising how many customers were waiting outside.
Some pupils were late for their first day back at school after the summer holidays as a result of the road closure.
The spokeswoman said: “We recognise that due to the demand and limited availability some of our customers may be disappointed not to have been successful in purchasing one. Whilst every effort was made to communicate to our customers that there would be no access to the site prior to 9.30am on 14 August, a number of people hoping to secure one of these limited bottles gathered at the gates causing a local road to become blocked. After we contacted local police to help minimise any disruption, the road was swiftly cleared and sales got underway at the distillery when it opened at 10am.
“We are grateful to Moray Police for their assistance and in light of the issues, we are reviewing our procedures.”